If you never ask, Answer is always No. Bootstrapped B2B SAAS Founder. Mediocrity makes me furious, especially mine. I write tweets by hand (no AI)
Greater Philadelphia, USA
Joined June 2009
- Tweets2.4K
- Following1.9K
- Followers983
- Likes2.2K
Pinned Tweet
Brilliant story of what it takes to find Product Market Fit. A lot of manual trial and error over a long period of time. No automations, no shortcuts
Marc Randolph on how it took Netflix a year and a half to find product/market fit
When Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings founded Netflix the model didn’t work at all. As Marc tells it:
“You ordered a disk. We mailed it to you with a due date. If you missed the due date, we had late fees. And the reality is the idea was ridiculous. It didn’t work. Nobody would rent from us, and if you did rent from us once, you didn’t rent from us again.”
The two co-founders quickly realized they had to try something different.
“This began a year and a half long process of trying to figure out some way to get people to rent DVDs by mail from us,” Marc explains. “We tried almost everything you could think of.”
Most of these they tried were bad, but that didn’t matter. It was about the process:
“It’s not about having a good idea. It’s about building this process and culture of trying lots of bad ideas. And we got really good at trying lots of bad ideas. One after after another — hundreds of them — each one informing us about what to try next.”
And finally, they found the idea that worked.
Marc and Reed were in the Netflix warehouse looking at several hundred thousand DVDs when they said to each other:
“It’s such a shame that all of these DVDs are here in the warehouse where they’re not doing anyone any good. I wonder if there’s a way to store them at our customer’s houses. Let them keep them, and then when they’re done, they mail it back. And rather than having them pay each time to replace it, let’s just have a monthly subscription and they can rent as often as they want.”
Marc continues:
“There were no due dates. No late fees. It was a ridiculous idea. But when we tested it, it was that mythical product/market fit. It worked. People loved it and couldn’t get enough of it. They told their friends. And they did not cancel their subscriptions.”
Video source: @StevenBartlett (2024)
Yash Chandra retweeted
When Surgery Center of Oklahoma opened our doors in 1997, our commitment to honest, transparent surgical pricing was seen as eccentric. Nearly three decades later, that approach has helped inspire a national movement toward greater transparency in healthcare.
Today, hospitals are required to publish their prices, although patients still face plenty of obstacles when trying to determine what their care will actually cost.
Meanwhile, we're still in the same building on Broadway Extension, still owned by the physicians who operate here, and still committed to giving patients one clear, all-inclusive price before their procedure.
We've been publishing those prices online since 2009, long before anyone was required to do so.
Nearly 30 years later, we still believe patients deserve to know what they're paying for.
Price your procedure today: SurgeryCenterOK.com
Yash Chandra retweeted
The impact of 1 truly great hire never ceases to amaze me
The impact of 2 truly great hires, sometimes you almost have a brand new company
If you are not paying for an LLM right now and only wing it with "free version", you are not going to be taken seriously as a Professional very soon. Either pony up personally or get your company to get that subscription.
"If you need kudos for just doing the basics," is the one that hit me the hardest when hiring people. It amazes me how many smart people still need kudos just for doing basics.
If you need training,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you need help setting up your computer,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you want to spend your first month ‘getting up to speed’,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you want max out your time off,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you can’t ship in week one,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you can’t sell without a brand behind you,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you need kudos for just doing the basics,
Do not join an early stage start-up
Yash Chandra retweeted
If you need training,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you need help setting up your computer,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you want to spend your first month ‘getting up to speed’,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you want max out your time off,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you can’t ship in week one,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you can’t sell without a brand behind you,
Do not join an early stage start-up
If you need kudos for just doing the basics,
Do not join an early stage start-up
You have made it in the SAAS world when AWS AEs start reaching out to you because of your spend per month. Wonder what they would upsell. Dedicated support ?
I love @caddyserver so much that every few months, I write this tweet. One of the best tools ever and calling it a "tool" is simplifying it.
Sounds like a privilege and may be it is . I am currently hiring for 2 roles at our company and it blows my mind when I see people with lot of professional experience sending really unprofessional email when they reach out. Some of them don't even start an email with "Hi Yash" or something equivalent as if they are emailing a friend or someone they know well.
I may be old school but those are immediately rejected. If you cannot write a professional email while applying for a job, you cannot work at my company where professionalism is the key to working with customers.
Thr more I grow older, the more I am convinced that most successful people have a sense of urgency to do things that normal people just cannot comprehend. Many times, that sense of urgency borderlines eccentricism.
A really good podcast by @robwalling about SAAS moats that is not easy to vibe code and replace. Go listen.
Moat 1: Buyers know and trust you
Moat 2: You’re the system of record
Moat 3: You’re allowed to act
Moat 4: Customers don’t check your work
Moat 5: Someone official already said yes
Moat 6: Everyone’s already in it
Moat 7: Every customer makes you smarter
Moat 8: It’s hard to keep running
startupsfortherestofus.com/e…
Yash Chandra retweeted
The exploits of the last few days are a good reminder of why we use SaaS. Our company pays for ~20 SaaS services. If we self-hosted them, we’d now be responsible for all of the security patches this week. Instead, our small monthly bill pays for their teams to handle everything.
The whole PHP saga is a great reminder to also keep your OS up to date as much as possible. For Ubuntu for example, the patches only work on version 22.04 or higher and if you were below these versions, you first have to update the OS itself before even getting the patch from PHP. That just doubled your work.
On that note, Ubuntu 22.04 will reach EOL as well soon so don't forget to upgrade to 24.04 or higher soon. Same goes for other distros.
Yash Chandra retweeted
startups, here's enterprise decoded ...
1. 'circle back' = dead
2. 'get it done asap' = within 90 days
3. 'send me what I can share internally' = 3 bullets
4. 'this is exciting' = let me play a role in shaping this for us internally
5. 'send me your paper' = i will send you mine back
6. 'how much time is needed' = 30min OR less
7. 'I will bring my boss' = I expect a match in seniority
8. 'no questions from my side" = I have no idea what just happened
9. 'this price seems fair' = this falls below what I had budgeted
10. 'give me time' = stop following up
This may be unpopular opinion but in the age of AI, a lot of "async" employees/contractors who do not want to work on customer facing roles will be the first to be replaced by AI.
So if you want to be valuable, figure out a way to be in customer facing roles that are complex and cannot be easily replaced by AI.
Hey @GovSherrillNJ , can you please get rid of the Health Insurance mandate/fines in NJ so that I can cancel my "insurance" (in quotes because we know its all a scam) and go with @crowdhealth ?